How to Say Delicious in Korean

This is one of the easiest and most important phrases for you to learn as you start learning Korean. You eat all day and everyday so knowing how to express your feeling about the food you’re eating is important in Korea. You will often hear Korean say “맛있어요” over and over which may seem a little overboard.

As seen in the graphic, the phrase delicious comes from combining “맛” and “있어” which literally means taste exists. This can be done for many other words in Korean, but we will discuss in later graphics.

There are also ways to say “very delicious”, “it looks delicious”, and “it was delicious.”

To say it’s very delicious, just add 나무 or 완전 in front of 맛있어요.

For it looks delicious, you would say “맛있겠다!” almost like an exclamation.

And for it was delicious, just use the past tense form and say “맛있었어요”.

For more about how to say different tastes in Korean, check out our graphic here.

Vocabulary in this graphic:

Delicious:

Formal -맛있습니다 (ma-shi-sseum-ni-da)

Standard – 맛있어요 (ma-shi-sseo-yo)

Informal – 맛있어 (ma-shi-sseo)

Very delicious:

너무/완전 맛있어요 (neo-mu/wan-jeon ma-shi-sseo-yo)

It looks delicious:

맛있겠다! (ma-shi-ge-tta)

It’s not delicious:

맛없다 (mat-eop-da)

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